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Friday, July 26, 2002

By Mackenzie Carpenter, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Restaurants like Luma in Aspinwall are a dime a dozen in bigger cities like Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles -- upscale neighborhood eateries whose savvy owners have the business plan down pat for attracting diners: paint the dining area in chic melon tones, string lots of twinkly halogen lights on wires across the ceiling, serve a menu with plenty of salmon, ahi tuna and "shallot reductions" on it -- with a duck dish thrown in for good measure -- and name the place something vaguely Italian-Spanish-Mediterranean (but after an inanimate object, not your uncle Louis).

	Kari Klusmeier prepares a table at Luma, an upscale neighborhood restaurant with a trendy menu. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

Not to be cynical.

Luma, in Aspinwall, is formulaic, too, but in a good way: It's an attractive, lighthearted, tasty replacement to the cozy but dark Buck's American Grill on Brilliant Street, where everything was carpeted and wood-paneled, where burgers, not mahi-mahi, ruled the roost. The food here is trendy if not exactly inventive or visionary: Luma shouts "profitable business venture," not "lifelong dream"; it is not a place where the chef lies awake at night thinking of new ways to braise veal cheeks.

But who's complaining? Walk past the pleasant outdoor dining area into Luma's dining room and get a shot of Prozac: light, butter-colored walls, snowy white-linen tablecloths, tiled floors and a friendly staff that will seat you without a reservation, and take your kids in good stride, too.

Around you, there's good people-watching material: trim blond Fox Chapel women in expensive Italian leather sandals and pink and green sweater sets; a shaggy double for Jimmy Buffett in flip-flops and Hawaiian shirt; an Edie Falco/James Gandolfini lookalike couple, and, of course, your mother-in-law with her helmet hairdo.

And most of them seem thrilled to be there. Since its owners, Gregory Ackerman and Michael Rudman, opened Luma on May 9, it's done very good business, and why not? There is a huge untapped market in the neighborhood: Hey, the Fox Chapel women could come here for lunch every day and have something different and yummy, like the signature lump crab cake ($10) with a red onion caper sauce, which Rudman appears to have brought over from an earlier stint at Andora Restaurant in Sewickley.

Indeed, both men seem to have done their time on the Pittsburgh restaurant scene: Rudman, 33, who oversees the kitchen, is a Mt. Lebanon native who trained at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and also worked at the Monterey Bay Fish Grotto and Morton's. Ackerman, in charge of the wines, started out as a server at Jake's Above the Square Downtown and then, when it was replaced by Siena, moved into a management capacity before moving on to Andora's. After the two decided to go into business together, they scouted 19 locations, Ackerman said, before settling on the former Buck's Grill site on Brilliant Avenue.

Despite such combined experience, the two have concocted an awfully big menu for such an intimate place -- with 19 entrees -- and the menu's tiny type itself is hard to read (although Rudman says it will be redesigned). Such ambition is often hard to sustain, but on two recent visits only one of four entrees was a flop, not bad for a restaurant that seems very busy. The starters and salads were of mixed quality: the zucchini rolled with capicolla, fresh mozzarella with basil in a vodka tomato cream sauce ($6) was delightful, the fried, breaded zucchini as light as air, contrasting nicely with the creamier mozza and salty meat folded within. Seared scallops, a special appetizer, were tender and sweet if almost overpowered by an oily, salty soy glaze.

Indeed, the chef's hand is lavish, overly so, when it comes to oil at Luma: The ubiquitous julienned red peppers that top or accompany every dish shimmer with it, and an arugula, red onion, portobello and toasted pine nut salad ($6) could have used less, not more of the warmed pancetta dressing it was tossed in.

But these were by and large successful starters. Not so the quesadilla of roasted corn, tomatoes and jack cheese with mango guacamole ($7), which wasn't anything better than you could get at Chi-Chi's, and the "napoleon" of beefsteak tomato, Bermuda onion and fresh bocconcini mozzarella and a honey balsamic roasted shallot pattern ($7). It was nothing more than a stack of hamburger fixings on a plate, featuring mealy supermarket tomatoes and thick rinds of onion that completely overpowered the mozza and what little dribs of balsamic vinegar "pattern" that I could discern.

Our only dud on the lengthy entree list, however, was a chicken, apple pesto sausage and "colossal" shrimp dish ($16) grilled with a New York herb butter. It was dry and, except for the sausage, tasteless -- the chicken little more than a boneless breast tossed on the plate next to the blackened-almost-to-a-crisp sausage and the not-so-colossal shrimp. It cried out for a sauce or something to bring it all together. Not acceptable.

But Luma begins to glow again with the Atlantic salmon pan-roasted with a champagne sauce and minted pine nut pesto ($21). It was luscious, high-class comfort food, as were the crab cakes ($24), although my dining companion was discomfited by the way the red onion caper sauce -- really a mayonnaise-like aioli -- was dribbled all over the dish, rather than served on the side. And because these cakes were baked, there was no seared crust, which I missed.

But wow, they were good. There's no question that Luma gets excellent fish and meat from its purveyors -- our waitress claims that its veal chop ($29) is the same one served at Morton's, and the pork tenderloin marinated in sesame and ginger and chargrilled with soy butter and scallion "trees" ($12) was achingly, meltingly good, a reminder once again why humans were meant to be carnivores (bring it on, vegans!).

The wine list, like the food, is au courant but doesn't overreach. Ackerman says he's focusing on value "rather than the super-high end": He has a "$20 for 20" program where 20 wines are offered for $20 each, and features house wines for $4.75 a glass and featured wines at $6.50 a glass ranging from a Duck Pond Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley in Oregon to a Raymond Estate Chardonnay.

Desserts, made out of house by the caterer Tallulah, were fine, including a warm chocolate mousse cake with vanilla ice cream which appealed to kids and adults alike who shared it, and a creme brulee, perfumey with almond, that I wouldn't let anyone else touch.

The service was efficient one night, sloppy the next: a long wait for the entrees during one visit, no wait at all another night, but this is a noisy, crowded popular place, so unevenness is probably to be expected. Just be thankful that the business plan is working and that there's one more good place to eat in Aspinwall, rather than one less. Luma's vervy, if somewhat slapshot approach to fine dining doesn't make it another Laforet, but its presence is a sign that restaurant entrepreneurs are seeing the Allegheny River valley -- Sharpsburg and Oakmont in particular -- as promising territory for new ventures. And how bad can that be?

Luma
8 Brilliant Ave.
Aspinwall
412-781-0355
412-781-4399

Hours: Mon.-Thurs. 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sun. 4 to 9 p.m.

The basics: Seats 82 people inside, 24 outside. All major credit cards accepted. 60-bottle wine list. Wheelchair accessible. No smoking in main dining areas; smoking permitted in bar. Entrees range from $9 to $29. American cuisine with global influences, emphasizing seafood, chicken, pork, veal and steak. Oral children's menu.

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